Friday, April 25

Franke Institute for the Humanities
1100 E. 57th Street, Regenstein Library, S-102, Chicago, IL 60637

10:15-10:45am | Coffee and pastries

10:45-11am | Welcome

11-12:30pm | Keynote

Francesca T. Royster — Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Mobility and the Unfinished Dream of Black Imaginative Freedom

Introduced by Fiona Boyd, PhD Candidate, Music, The University of Chicago

12:30-1:30pm | Lunch

1:30-3pm | Charting Industries

Jada Watson — Billboard Charts and 1990s Country: The Myth of Neutrality

Travis A. Jackson — Tune In: “Nashville” vs. Nashville

Chelsea Burns — The Stuff of Bluegrass: Billy Strings in the Contemporary Music Market

Chair: Paula Harper, Assistant Professor in the Department of Music and The College, The University of Chicago

3-3:30pm | Coffee

3:30-4:30pm | Queerness and Critique

Emily Williams Roberts — “Why Did I Have to Leave Home Just to Hear You Say My Name?”: Queer Reframings of Nostalgia in Bluegrass Lyricism

Jacob Kopscienski — Hearing Place/Feeling Structures: Quare Affects and Strategies in Appalachia and Americana

Chair: Pranathi Diwakar, Postdoctoral Researcher and Instructor, Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity, The University of Chicago

Saturday, April 26

Franke Institute for the Humanities
1100 E. 57th Street, Regenstein Library, S-102, Chicago, IL 60637

9-9:30am | Coffee and pastries

9:30-11am | Mexico, Mexicanidad, and Countryness

Nadine Hubbs — Country as Quintessentially Mexican American Music

Chris Batterman Cháirez — Corrido Tumbado: Making Sense of Maleficent Media in Michoacán, Mexico

Rumya Putcha — “What’s that got to do with Mexico?”: Country Music and the U.S. American Empire

Chair: Sergio Delgado Moya, Associate Professor of Latin American and Latinx Studies, The University of Chicago

11-11:15am | Coffee

11:15-12pm | Q&A with Mary Cutrufello (Chair: Sumanth Gopinath)

12-1:30pm | Lunch

1:30-3pm | Histories and Intersections

Jocelyn R. Neal — Song Form as Historical Narrative in Country Music

Sumanth Gopinath and Anna Schultz — “Distant Drums”: US Country/Western Music in India, 1960-1990

Amy Skjerseth — What Covers History: Chance the Rapper, Tracy Chapman, and the Country Cover Song

Chair: Philip V. Bohlman, Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, Music and the Humanities in the College; Associate Faculty in the Divinity School, The University of Chicago

3-3:30pm | Coffee

3:30-5pm | Beyoncé and Black Country Futures

Stephanie Shonekan — This American Life, According to Jolene

Fiona Boyd — KNTRY Radio Texas and Radiophonic Worldbuilding

Jessica Swanston Baker — “You’ll remember me ’cause we got somethin’ to prove”: Cowboy Carter and Beyoncé’s Legacy-Building Project

Chair: Rhiannon Love Auriemma, Lecturer in Gender and Sexuality Studies, The University of Chicago

Logan Center for the Arts, Café Logan
915 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637

8pm | Country Music Intersections Concert (Featuring Mary Cutrufello and The Gated Community)